Despite owner Elon Musk’s attempts to convert the company into a subscription-based service, the company remains dependent on an advertising business that produced about 90% of its revenue in 2021. And in the initial months after he bought Twitter, Musk expressed a keen interest in restarting the social media company’s political advertising business, which it had voluntarily shuttered in 2019.
In recent weeks, Madrazo, who previously headed ad sales at the non-political, creator-focused media firm Studio71, has been privately introducing himself to influential figures in the political ad world in Washington, D.C. He’s part of what’s essentially a two-man operation to restart X’s political advertising business with the goal of capitalizing on the massive amounts of money that campaigns are about to spend during the 2024 elections.
It’s an uphill battle made more difficult by an escalating series of provocations from Musk himself on the platform, most recently his promotion of an antisemitic conspiracy theory. One of X’s latest partners to bail is CNN, which confirmed to Semafor that on Friday it had stopped adding to Amplify, a crucial advertising platform for X that shows ads with publishers’ videos.
X has faced declining revenue and user counts since Musk took the reins. Site users have dropped by 15% year-over-year as people flee the platform, in many cases to rival sites like Meta’s Threads and Bluesky. Revenue from ad sales has dropped by 54%, The Wall Street Journal found, after many advertisers fled last year. Some advertisers have returned to the site, but they’re spending less than they did before: In September, Musk said X’s U.S. advertising revenue had dropped 60%.
Disney, Apple, and IBM are among a slew of companies who are pulling their ads from X, after owner Elon Musk appeared to endorse an antisemitic post earlier this week.
IBM said it pulled its ads after a report found its content appearing next to hate speech on the platform. The entertainment giant Lionsgate — which released the new Hunger Games film on Friday — will also will suspend ads.
The watchdog Media Matters found that ads from top companies, including IBM, Apple, Oracle, and Xfinity appeared next to posts promoting Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.
“IBM has zero tolerance for hate speech and discrimination and we have immediately suspended all advertising on X while we investigate this entirely unacceptable situation,” IBM said.
Hate speech has skyrocketed on X since Musk purchased the site last year. Hateful content jumped shortly after the billionaire took ownership, and antisemitic content shot up by 61% just two weeks after the purchase, The New York Times reported at the time. The issue has not subsided: Earlier this week, The Center for Countering Digital Hate found that since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war, site moderators have failed to remove antisemitic, anti-Palestinian, and anti-Muslim content from X.
“We’re thankful for his offer to join the session remotely, however it was agreed among all speakers that participation would be in person,” the statement read. “We look forward to Elon joining us at a future APEC CEO Summit.”
Musk was among the executives who attended a dinner with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in San Francisco on Wednesday evening.
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